Known incoming call screening services (e.g., do-not-disturb services) allow a user to specify which call treatment to use for incoming calls. The user may provision the incoming call screening treatment to apply to all incoming calls or a subset of incoming calls. Incoming calls may be given one of several possible termination treatments, such as: normal call termination, call termination with distinctive alerting, call forwarded to voicemail, call forwarded to another number, call routed to a specific announcement, or call blocked. The incoming call screening service is supported by standards (e.g., ANSI Wireless Standards TIA/EIA/IS-771, Wireless Intelligent Network Standards, December 1998, “Incoming Call Screening (ICS)”).
The user may employ the incoming call screening service to provision different incoming call screening treatments to apply to calls with different characteristics. For example, the user may provision calls from a first calling party to receive normal call termination, and calls from a second calling party to be forwarded to voicemail. The user may provision the incoming call screening service to use a number of screening criteria related to calling party characteristics, called party characteristics, or other call characteristics to determine which incoming call screening treatment is appropriate. To select the appropriate incoming call screening treatment for an incoming call, the incoming call screening service uses specific, quantitative criteria, such as: calling party number, calling party area code and/or office code, password provided by calling party, called party location, serving mobile switching center identification, status of called party features (e.g., call forwarding feature, do-not-disturb feature), date, time, and date and time ranges.
The incoming call screening service compares the objective characteristics of the incoming call to the incoming call screening criteria to determine which incoming call screening treatment to use for the incoming call. The incoming call screening service does not allow the user to create incoming call screening criteria based on subjective factors. As one shortcoming, the incoming call screening service limits the level of customization provided to the user of the called communication device by not allowing subjective incoming call screening criteria.
Thus, a need exists for one or more incoming call screening treatment selection criteria based on subjective factors selected by a user of a called communication device.